Sunday, October 9, 2011

Disarm Rules

As with any rules set, you want something that will appear
realistic without being too complicated.
The particular problem with creating a disarm mechanic, or any mechanic
that deals with special combat tactics or maneuvers, is you want to create
options that can be attractive and useful (and thus meaningful) but not so
attractive and useful that they completely disrupt or unbalance the general
combat mechanic.

Let me offer a suggestion (the following is based on a “first
three booklets only” OD&D rules set—thus hit dice are 1d6, among other
things—and I will use 16th-century English weapons in one of the
examples, but I think it is easily adaptable):

After a successful hit, but before rolling damage, the
attacker may elect to try to disarm his opponent. If the defender is fighting with two weapons, the attacker
may choose which weapon to target.

In my view systems that require maneuvers to be declared
before rolling to hit add an extra level of unnecessary fussing. In addition, many if not most “hits” in
D&D are not actual weapon strikes but rather successful attempts at getting
the advantage of the defender or wearing him down. Thus, it seems appropriate that a disarm attempt would
follow a hit rather than preceding it.

One might object, I suppose, that the fact that someone is
wearing, say, plate armor shouldn’t make it easier to potentially disarm him. I would say three things in response:
1. Combat in D&D is abstract.
That someone is wearing plate, makes them less vulnerable to actual
strikes but also perhaps makes them more potentially effective at stopping
their opponent from doing various things—their armor means they don’t have to
worry as much about, say, using their arm to block a blow (or block a
successful disarm). 2. I’m not
sure I want a disarm mechanic that would make disarming the guy in plate armor the default attack (since its
tough to get at him any other way).
It might be that this would be somewhat realistic, but I think it would change
the general combat mechanic in a bad way.
3. It’s simpler.

The base chance to disarm is 11 on
1d20 (50%) with these modifiers:

-1 for every 3 hit points of the
defender (what he has remaining, not his total).

This tracks two things: It’s harder to disarm powerful
characters. It’s easier to disarm
anyone when they are fatigued. The
hit dice (though not hit points) of the attacker are taken into account in the initial to hit roll. Again, the -3 is based on the “pre-inflationary”
original three-booklets. If one is
using a Greyhawk, Classic or AD&D sort of mechanic, one could make it -1
for every 5 hit points.

+/- 1 for the difference in weight between the attacker’s weapon versus the defender’s
weapon.

Given the weapon weights in my game, this is not as
potentially radical a modifier as it might seem. In my view, the weapon weights in all versions of D&D
are too high. For example, a
two-handed sword is pegged at 15 lb. in Men & Magic and 25 lb. in 1st
Edition AD&D. A halberd is
pegged at 15 lb. and 17½ lb., a longsword at 5 lb. and 6 lb. But I would make these weights much
lower—8 lb. for the two-handed sword, 7 lb. for the halberd and 3 lb. for the
longsword. I believe this is more historically accurate. See the
excellent What Did Historical Swords Weigh? at the excellent ARMA site. Or go to your local Target, buy a 25
lb. container of cat litter and imagine yourself effectively wielding something
that heavy.

I understand that some rules sets choose not to track weapon weight. I think this makes sense in terms of the encumbrance mechanic (I like and use James Raggi's system in his Lamentations of the Flame Princess), but I think tracking weight can have value for other purposes--such as disarm rules. If keeping track of weapon weight bothers anyone, then one could just have the referee declare a modifier on the fly ("using a two-handed sword to try and dislodge that short sword? You get a -5")

+4 if the attacker is wielding a
weapon that is designed to be effective at disarming. In my setting this would include the black-bill and forest
bill—polearms with all sorts of nasty hooks and curves on their blades.

-4 if the defender is wielding a
two-handed weapon.

If the disarm is successful, the
weapon will fly in a random (1d12) direction and land 1d20 feet away.